2013 - Issue 4 - Fall

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SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY
"It's not how much money you give;
it's about getting engaged and
having empathy."—JOHN HAILER
68
ABOVE: John Hailer volunteers as often
as his schedule permits. LEFT: His
painting, along with ones created by
children affiliated with The Home, was
auctioned off to raise money for the
organization.
have enough desks or books; the teachers
were lackluster, and most students were
poor. He fell behind in every subject.
Luckily for Hailer, the area redistricted
and he was assigned to another location. His new school in the suburbs,
only an hour away from the previous one, was in a brand-new building.
The library was stocked. "I got to leave [the other school], but all of those
other kids were still there," he says. "When people talk about hard work, I
think that's a crock. Life is full of hard-working people, and some get luckier than others. Kids that are falling behind now—they're never going to
catch up."
Tall and lanky, Hailer walks with a graceful, athletic gait. (He attended
Beloit College on a basketball scholarship.) He has salt-and-pepper hair
with silvery sideburns. He is an easy conversationalist and has a sentimental sensibility. "Kodak commercials make me cry," he says. As a university
student, he volunteered for Harold Washington, the first black mayor of
Chicago. He also worked on Jimmy Carter's reelection campaign against
Ronald Reagan. His greatest influence, though, was his father.
One evening, when he was home from school on a break, he and his dad
got into a heated argument about politics. "Here I was lecturing him on
liberalism. My father looked at me, and said, 'You've learned a lot in college. But always realize you may not know everything, no matter how old
you get.' He gave me a kiss on the forehead," he recalls. "And he passed
away that night."
Hailer says his father taught him: "It's not how much money you give—
even though that's really important; it's about getting engaged and having
empathy, and thinking about how to improve people's lives."
It is this sentiment that drives Hailer's vision of The Home today. He
volunteers there as often as his schedule permits: He plays basketball with
the kids, paints murals with them, or reads them books. One of his proudest accomplishments is the creation of Waltham House, which is designed
for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)
Children from the
teenagers. LGBT teens are five times more likely to
early days of The
Home, which is
commit suicide than their heterosexual counterone of the oldest
parts, according to research. Many more attempt
children's charities
in the US.
continued on page 68
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE EDSON (PLAYGROUND); COURTESY OF JOHN HAILER (PAINTING); COURTESY OF THE HOME FOR LITTLE WANDERERS (CHILDREN)
continued from page 66
As president and CEO of Natixis Global Asset Management
(NGAM) for North America and Asia, a Paris- and Boston-based fund
management firm that runs about $785 billion, Hailer is one of the
most successful money managers in the world. Even in difficult markets, NGAM's assets are up more than 53 percent since 2007. Last year
Natixis donated $1.8 million to a number
of Boston-area charities, including The
Home. Employees gave an additional
$330,000 to charity and donated 2,700
hours of their time.
Hailer is determined to encourage
more corporate chiefs to follow his lead.
"Corporate America needs to understand
that the more we help places like The
Home, the less you have to spend on the
back end," he says. "Our investments
today are going to be a heck of a lot less
than what we would have to pay in taxes
and social services or medical payments
later on. Not only does it make you feel
good, but you can prove economically it's
very good for the community."
Hailer pleads his case as a businessman, but his commitment to children's causes is personal. While his upbringing was solidly middle class,
his father's political career exposed him to the hardships of others at an
impressionable age.
Born in Roslindale, Hailer was the eighth child (of 10) to Mary Gilson
and Frederick Hailer, a former Boston City councillor. Throughout the
'60s and '70s, his father worked for the federal government in several different administrations—both Democratic and Republican, which required
the Hailer family to move up and down the East Coast between Boston and
Virginia several times. During his childhood, Hailer went to 10 different
schools. He remembers one school, in Newport News, Virginia, that didn't
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